Cornel West: I love Obama and pray for his safety. But he is a war criminal.

Friday night on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” panel member Dr. Cornel West opened up about the difficulty of being an Obama supporter who opposes drone warfare, and in an at times heated discussion, revealed that you can in fact support a politician but not embrace all of their policies.

“You seem very hard on President Obama,” Maher said to West.

“It’s out of deep love, brother,” West responded.

“You called him a war criminal,” said Maher.

“I’m telling the truth,” West said.

“We’ve got two conservatives on the panel,” Maher said, indicating co-panelists Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller and libertarian political strategist Liz Mair, “and you hate him worse than they do.”

“It’s not a matter of hating him,” said West. “I pray for him and his family and for their safety.”

Mair asserted that neither Bush nor Obama has maintained their duty to protect the Constitution. Lewis opined that if the U.S. prosecuted every president who committed crimes that the country would become “a banana republic.”

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David Ferguson is an editor at Raw Story. He was previously writer and radio producer in Athens, Georgia, hosting two shows for Georgia Public Broadcasting and blogging at Firedoglake.com and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book.